Category Archives: Mormon Church Doctrine and Teachings

We’re gathered in our family room. My daughter and I have some maple candies we got at the sugar bush this morning. My one son is drinking some milk and the other son is giving me shifty eyes (I’m not sure why). We’re settled in and ready to go…

Well, another conference has come and gone. I think my favourite talks of the conference were Elder Andersen’s talk on faith and President Uchtdorf’s talk about making our church experience more meaningful.

Probably the most touching thing about conference was seeing President Monson struggle through his talk Sunday morning. He seemed to shrink physically before our eyes, but his Spirit was strong and he was determined to finish.

As always, I loved the music. All of the choirs sounded great. I had tears come to my eyes during one of the congregational hymns. The camera showed a group of people doing sign language. I’ve never seen that before. There wasn’t just one person signing so people knew what was being sung. The whole section was signing together. In effect, they were all singing! I loved that.

Well, I hope you all got something out of conference. I sure did, and I look forward to pondering on these things in the coming months

The baptism was beautiful this morning. My daughter was thrilled to be baptized and confirmed, and the turnout from the ward was great. The entire service was probably only about 40 minutes long, and then we had some light refreshments until about 11:30. We’re all back at home now to watch the first Sunday session.

Tonight we went to the annual “sub-sational”. My brother and his family is visiting for my daughter’s baptism, so he came with my father, my son and me. We had a nice time, but left room for our tradional post-priesthood session trip out. I’m pretty sure we’re going to Boston Pizza again.

There were about 40 priesthood holders in attendance tonight at the church as the meeting started.

I spent most of the time between sessions watching whatever came on the Mormon Channel. I love watching the World Report and found it interesting (as always). I also cleaned up more around the house in preparation for the family visiting tomorrow after my daughter’s baptism.

Often critics of the Church will bring up something that a prophet or apostle has done that was wrong (in their opinion) and ask how a man of God could do something like that. Defenders of the Church often then reply with this quote from Joseph Smith:

“a prophet [is] a prophet only when he [is] acting as such”

History of the Church 5:265

I definitely understand the concept, but I have to admit that seems kind of like a cop-out. It kind of gives the impression that a prophet can be a prophet, and then decide to be mean, and just say that he wasn’t being a prophet while he was being mean.

I heard a quote mentioned on a recent FairMormon podcast that I think gives more clarity on this topic. The quote was, “when God makes the prophet, he does not unmake the man.”

The full quote is from David O McKay, and is as follows:

Someone has said that when God makes the prophet, he does not unmake the man. I believe that, though being “born anew,” and being entitled to new life, new vigor, new blessings, yet the old weaknesses may still remain. The adversary stands by, ever eager and ready to attack and strike us at our weakest point.

Many of you are familiar with the quote from President Brigham Young that people use where supposedly he said:

The greatest fear I have is that the people of this Church will accept what we say as the will of the Lord without first praying about it and getting the witness within their own hearts that what we say is the word of the Lord.

Well, the Millenial Star had a nice write-up about this recently. Apparently this is not a transcript from a talk, but a summary of a comment that Brigham Young most likely made. Interesting reading… check it out!